The Carrington Event in 1859 is a scary geomagnetic storm that would probably take out the GPS system and large parts of the power grid if it happened today. But evidence is mounting that it's small on the scale of potential solar flares to worry about knowablemagazine.org/article/physic…
There are signs in tree rings and ice cores that the Sun really roasted us in 994, 775, 660 BC and on earlier occasions. The 1859 size events probably happen on the order of 2-3 times a century, but (just like with California earthquakes this century) we've been unusually lucky.
If you've followed me a long time, you know my fascination with predictable natural disasters that are just rare enough to be outside living memory. A satellite-roasting solar flare is a 100% certainty, but imagine a world that can't even fight covid successfully planning for it.
It's a hard sell to make, but you really want a highly interconnected technological civilization like ours to be pummeled with frequent medium and large natural disasters so that we are better equipped for the really rare giant ones. Another reason to welcome climate change!
Meanwhile, though, we've invented a light bulb that depends on someone maintaining a free javascript library somewhere in perpetuity in order to stay lit.
Becoming completely dependent on the internet over the course of 20 years ensures that anything that happens on timescales of 21 years or greater will destroy civilization. Fortunately, that same internet has also shown us why that's a good thing.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
